Since those days were. The word "days" is supplied. Revised Version, "through all that time," viz. the fourteen years spoken of in Haggai 2:15. Septuagint, τίνες ἦτε, "what ye were;" the Vulgate omits the words.
When one came to an heap of twenty measures. The word "measures" is not in the Hebrew: it is supplied by the LXX; σάτα (equivalent to scabs), and by Jerome, modiorum. But the particular measure is of no importance; it is the proportion only on which stress is laid.
The prophet particuiarizes the general statements of Haggai 1:6, Haggai 1:9. The "heap" is the collection of sheaves (Ruth 3:7). This when threshed yielded only half that they had expected. There were (in fact) but ten; καὶ ἐγένετο κριθῆς δέκα σάτα, "and there were ten measures of barley."
The press fat; the wine fat, the vat into which flowed the juice forced from the grapes when trodden out by the feet in the press. A full account of this will be found in the 'Dict. of the Bible,' arts.
"Wine press" and "Wine." Fifty vessels out of the press. The Hebrew is "fifty purah." The word purah is used in Isaiah 63:3 to signify the press itself, hence the Authorized Version so translates it here, inserting "out of," and supplying "vessels," as "measures" above; but it probably here denotes a liquid measure in which the wine was drown.
LXX; μετρητάς (equivalent to Hebrew baths). Jerome, lagenas; and in his commentary, amphoras. They came and examined the grapes and expected fifty purahs, "press measures," but they did not get even half that they had hoped.
There were but twenty. Knabenbauer suggests that the meaning may be—looking at the crop of grapes, they expected to draw out, i.e. empty (chasaph), the press fifty times, but were egregiously deceived.